Tim Schouten’s latest exhibition explores the verbal promises made but not included in Canada’s first two numbered treaties, a daunting subject the non-Aboriginal artist prepared for with extensive research and travel. His academic and practical knowledge of the land help provide the emotive layers of Schouten’s encaustics on canvas — textured landscapes almost without form, heavy with deep greens and blues. “I’m trying to evoke the sense of history in the work, the sense that there’s something underlying the image,” Schouten says. “I’m always struggling to find ways to bring that potency into the picture without being strident.” Working from photographs, Schouten builds on each work to mimic the layering of history on the site. Encaustic, in which melted wax with pigments is spread then scraped off a canvas, proved a perfect medium, he says. Schouten’s Treaties series began a decade ago, when the Winnipeg native was struck by the notion of landscapes as historical documents, specifically treaty lands and the voices of the First Nations people who lived there. Since then, Schouten has traveled to the signing locations of all 11 numbered treaties.